1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of cultivating fruit bearing trees and apparatus suitable therefor which results in the trees having a predetermined geometric layers of fruiting branches which extend outwardly normal to the row wise direction from row wise supported laterals.
2. Description of Prior Art
Methods of supporting row wise extending laterals are known. One such method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,526,993 granted Sept. 8, 1970 to H. Siebol. In this system a single row wise extending member such as a wire supports oppositely and row wise directed laterals from a twin leader tree. The support however, involves the tying of the laterals to the supporting wire or the like and this results in a cluster of fruiting branches being disposed about the supporting wire so that the weight of the fruit (e.g. apples) is bourne by the row wise extending supporting member. A similar arrangement is disclosed in my New Zealand Patent Specification No. 186,066 which departs from the Siebol system inasfar as tying is unnecessary through the helical winding of the laterals about the row wise extending wire or the like. With such a system the annual yield of a four year old twin leader paired wire trained apple tree taken to full height (i.e. four spaced apart pairs of wires giving four levels) is approximately 4.2 packed bushels. A four year old tree of the same genus which has a single leader and is unwired has an annual yield approximately 2.05 packed bushels. The yield of an eight year old tree trained in accordance with the present invention is likely to be 2,000 to 3,000 bushels packed per acre. This compares more than favourably with 800 to 2,500 packed bushels to the acre (an average of 1,500) for an 8 year old conventional single leader free standing trees. Notwithstanding the foregoing however, and the fact that trees can be brought to bear fruit much earlier than when unsupported some considerable gains can be made by further controlling and training the growth of such trees and taking steps also to ensure the better control of the fruiting branches which will assist in pruning and also will assist in machine harvesting thereof.